Using the cloud to overcome the ‘great firewall’ of China

As efforts to regulate the Internet in China continue to ramp up, a government watchdog looks to help people overcome censors through cloud computing.

There are a variety of mediums that individuals use to convey their thoughts online. Be it through a Tweet or a blog post, they often take on very different forms, each with their own unique portrayals of a message. However, because the Internet is so multifaceted in the ways it can express opinions, some governments have grown concerned about what is being said online.

Few governments are more guilty of this than China's when it comes to censoring the Internet. Currently, the country uses a massive fire wall program that is aimed to block forms of content that the government deems in appropriate for the country. This includes websites like Facebook and Twitter, along with specific entries on Wikipedia.

Expansion into video
Another recent government action now looks to limit the amount of control the Chinese government has over the videos that are uploaded to the Internet. Reuters reported that a new rule will look to prevent government dissent by limiting what kind of content can be portrayed in online videos. The action will "vulgar" context, base art, and violent and sexual content that could negatively affect society according to the government's media branch.

Many feel that this latest crackdown is aimed at limiting the mediums in which customers can voice their dissent toward the government.

Overcoming the wall
While China continues to implement regulations on the Internet, a number of users have found that they are able to get around the firewall through a variety of strategies. One strategy that has emerged uses cloud hosting to make websites unblockable, according to the Epoch Times.

GreatFire.org is a non-profit aimed at undoing Chinese censorship and has recently employed a new strategy. The organization plans to use the cloud to host mirror websites of ones that are blocked in the U.S., thereby unblocking websites like the China Digital Times.

The news source noted that strategies in the past have achieved similar goals, but have quickly been undone by the government after it threatened to cut business ties with companies like Apple. However, this strategy would use Amazon's cloud hosting services, which have a major presence in the country. Fortunately, there are so many cloud computing services that the options for Great Fire are so vast, it would be difficult to stop them all.